The Root of all Evil by J.S. Fletcher — Read

Close countenance though Jeckie Farnish kept to all the world, her thoughts had never been so many nor so varied as at this eventful stage of her career. She spent many a sleepless night considering possibilities, probabilities, eventualities. She thought over ways and means; she reckoned up her resources. She tried to look ahead as far as possible; to take everything into account. But, in all her reflections and plans and schemings, there was one dominant note -- the desire to make money out of her lucky discovery -- money, more money than she had ever dreamed of possessing. She was in no hurry. She made Mortimer and Farebrother continue their boring operations until she became as certain as they were themselves. They had made these boreholes, so as to test the whole of Jeckie's property, and had kept a careful journal of the boring, which was punctiliously entered up -- Jeckie made a point of inspecting that journal, and of examining the cores which the boring cylinders brought up and were duly labelled and laid out under cover. But she was not satisfied with this, nor with merely taking the opinions of Mortimer and his friend. At her own instance and expense she called in two acknowledged mining experts and a professor of geology from one of the local universities; to these three she submitted the whole matter, only impressing upon them that she wanted an opinion that could be relied upon. All three agreed with Mortimer and Farebrother -- coal was there, under the otherwise unpromising surface of the forty acres, in vast quantity. So, as Mortimer was constantly saying, there was nothing to do but to arrange the financial side of the affair, and to get to work on the construction of the necessary mine.

Jeckie was not going to be hurried about that, either; she had her own ideas. In spite of Mortimer's exhortations and Farebrother's hints, she kept them to herself until she was ready to act. But upon one point she was determined, and had been determined from the very first. Neither squire, nor parson, nor Stubley, nor Merritt, nor any Savilestowe party was going to come in with her -- no, nor was Mortimer, of whom, all unknown to him, she was making a convenience. She was going to keep this El Dorado to herself as far as ever she could -- to be chief controller of its destinies, to be master. Nevertheless, knowing, after her various consultations with Mortimer and Farebrother, that she did not possess sufficient capital of her own to establish a colliery, she had decided to take in one partner who could contribute what she could not find. She had that partner in her mind's eye -- Lucilla Grice.